five days out from the fiscal cliff. we will run the latest scenarios and find out what they could mean for your money. >>> first though as we mentioned, holiday sales on the disappointing side. could this set the sector back in a big way. patrick mckeevers is over at mkm partners. howard toobin is a retail analyst. >> good morning. >> patrick, let me start with you and ask whether this recent set of data, which is essentially capturing the whole season, came as a surprise? because i haven't seen too many tracking polls, so to speak, that would suggest that the season is as weak as this says. >> not a surprise to me. i cover the discount store space so i do cover walmart, target, tjx, so on and so forth. >> what did you see? >> what i saw was pretty weak traffic. a good black friday followed by a pronounced lull in spending. and a decent pickup into the -- into christmas, but just not enough to make up for some of the earlier weakness. target, for example, there was a lot of excitement about the company's partnership wit